Campaigning for a senate seat in the house of body image
Her boney knuckles shift unbound in fight for dominance
An underdog
Given half a chance between nicotine streaked fingers
And crash diets
She blocks the mental carcinogens spewed from lips
All too familiar with late night binges
Her slogan:
Hunger only believes it’s beautiful
When beautiful becomes sculpted out of hunger
Chiseled marble forms in magazines
And all the young girls follow the Pied Piper
The candidate clutches her skin over ribs
Stretching their way back to healthy
After a brief encounter with it’s opponents tactics
Plastic surgery marking pouches of “excess”
The body approaches the podium
“As many of you know, I have, in the past,
Fallen victim to the shallow
And I’m here to tell you
The only hunger that’s beautiful
Is the hunger to know yourself
Together we can fight the opposition
Take back the power of blood breath bones
Let’s look in the mirror with naked reverence
At what each sacred body has to offer us
Let’s unstitch the seams of size 0 fabric
Quilt in patches to embrace the “excess”
It need not define us
It’s just skin in reflection but a masterpiece of excellence
The body pauses – notices – a demonstration swelling
Wallets fat with weight watchers and waif fashioninstas
Pouty lips and high rollers on the strip of celebrity
Her stomach growls in protest
Hunger is beautiful, hunger is beautiful
Still stretch marked with the roadmap of supposed perfection
She eats a sandwich
She laughs
Soon she will have the floor
She will filibuster Teen magazine for each girl
Making decisions based on air brushed images
For every woman weighing worth with a scale
Yes, these fat fists are taking on the industry
She’s voting for herself
I heard this read at a poetry slam by its author, Jocelyn Bates. We had randomly become friends that evening. The fact that this was her poem made me feel like God was involved in this one....
